Love Alarm (2019) Review: A Great Hook, a Wobbly Triangle

Is Love Alarm worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Love Alarm has one of the cleverest premises in recent K-drama, and its first season turns it into a wistful teen romance about being seen, but the second season drifts and the love triangle outstays its welcome. The show is at its best when the app raises questions about privacy, loneliness and public judgement. It is weaker when it forgets those questions and settles into who-chooses-whom.

What is Love Alarm about?

In a near-future Seoul, a smartphone app called Love Alarm chimes whenever someone within ten metres has feelings for you. It shows no names, only a number, and it quickly becomes a public measure of every teenager’s worth. Kim Jo-jo (Kim So-hyun) is a high school student who lost her parents and lives with her aunt’s family, keeping her head down, working part-time jobs and hiding a lot of pain behind a cheerful face. The app forces her into the open when two very different boys set it off: Hwang Sun-oh (Song Kang), a wealthy, confident model, and his quieter best friend Lee Hye-young (Jung Ga-ram). Go Min-si plays Jo-jo’s cousin, who has her own reasons to resent her.

Love Alarm is a South Korean Netflix original in Korean, adapted from a webtoon and written for the screen by Lee Ah-yeon and Cha Yeon-soo. This review covers the complete series: two seasons and 14 episodes released between 2019 and 2021. The story has ended, with the second season jumping forward to catch up with the characters after high school.

A premise that says something about being seen

The show’s hook is more than a gimmick. Love Alarm imagines a world where affection has become data, visible to everyone, and the first season is shrewd about how that would feel for teenagers who already live under constant scrutiny. Popular students flaunt their numbers; lonely ones feel exposed by an empty screen. Some of the most interesting material deals with people who refuse to download the app, or who find ways to hide from it, and with the way a technology sold as romance becomes a tool of social pressure.

The tone is unexpectedly melancholy for a youth romance. Jo-jo’s grief and her fear of being a burden give the first season an emotional seriousness, and the pastel imagery of school corridors and city streets is shot with a slightly chilly, lonely feel.

Kim So-hyun holds the centre

Kim So-hyun gives Jo-jo a guardedness that keeps the character from becoming a passive prize between two boys. She plays a girl who has learned to hide what she wants, which makes every chime of the app feel like a small crisis. Song Kang, in the role that raised his profile, has a genuine screen presence as Sun-oh, and his scenes with Kim carry most of the show’s romantic heat. Jung Ga-ram has the harder job as Hye-young, the gentler rival whose feelings are more interior, and he makes the character more sympathetic than the script sometimes allows.

Where the second season loses the thread

The two-year gap between seasons shows. Season two spends much of its six episodes circling the same romantic dilemma without deepening it, and the app’s bigger social implications, teased so intriguingly early on, are left largely unexplored. The triangle becomes repetitive, with characters holding back feelings for reasons that feel more like plotting than psychology. The shorter first season, with its eight episodes, is the stronger and more self-contained half of the show.

Who should watch Love Alarm?

It suits viewers who enjoy youth romance with a slightly speculative twist, fans of Kim So-hyun and Song Kang, and anyone curious about technology dramas that are more wistful than dystopian. Fourteen episodes is a light commitment by K-drama standards, easily managed over a couple of weekends. The series deals with bullying, grief and some darker themes connected to the app’s social pressures, so it is aimed at older teenagers and adults rather than younger viewers.

If you like its mix of youth and longing, try these next:

• Twenty-Five Twenty-One for a richer, more grown-up coming-of-age romance.
• Twinkling Watermelon, another high school story with a fantasy twist and more warmth.
• Queen of Tears if you want a bigger, glossier romantic melodrama.

The verdict

Love Alarm is worth it mainly for its superb idea and a first season that treats teenage loneliness with real feeling. The second season never matches it, and the triangle eventually drains the premise of its sting, but Kim So-hyun and Song Kang give the romance enough charge to carry you through.

Rating: 3.5/5